


mended with gold

by lagaudiere



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9316601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lagaudiere/pseuds/lagaudiere
Summary: Yuri's first kiss was when he was sixteen, and in any accounting of kisses except chronological order, it wouldn't even rank. It hardly counted.Viktor’s first kiss was when he was sixteen, and it changed his life.





	

Yuri's first kiss was when he was sixteen, and in any accounting of kisses except chronological order, it wouldn't even rank. It hardly counted.  
  
At sixteen, he and Yuuko are still competing together, in pairs skating. They've rehearsed their program to technical perfection, the lifts and throws perfect, the jumps coordinated to the second.  
  
"It's missing something," Minako says.  
  
She watches from the side of the rink with her lips pursed, unimpressed.  
  
"It needs passion," Minako says. "Romance. Yuri, can't you act like you love her?"  


It was, in Yuri’s opinion at the time, the worst thing she could have said.

  
Yuri is sixteen and he knows how he is supposed to feel. If not Yuuko -- though that would have been convenient -- there should be someone, some girl. Any girl.

 

Minako must see something flicker across his face, because she immediately winces. “Oh, Yuri, I'm sorry,” she says. “Let's just be done with practice for today, hmm?”

 

“Okay,” Yuri mumbles. He doesn't look at Yuuko as he gets off the ice and pulls off his skates.

 

He sits there on the sidelines, waiting for Minako to leave. She hadn't meant anything by it, he knows that. It's part of their performance score and what they'll be judged on. It's just the way the sport works.

 

Yuri thinks he probably should be skating singles.

 

Minako leaves, eventually, but Yuuko’s still there, hovering over him with a concerned expression, still on her skates.

 

“Hey, Yuri?” she says, questioning, and when he looks up, she kisses him.

 

It's brief, and he doesn't know how to respond -- he certainly doesn't kiss back, but he doesn't quite have the presence of mind to pull away, either. It just sort of happens.

 

“Um,” he says uncertainly when she stops.

 

Yuuko looks a little sad, he thinks. He feels more than a little sad too. “Sorry,” she says. “I don't know, I thought it might help.”

 

“I don't think it will,” Yuri says, and tries to smile.

 

He works on his expressions in the mirror that night, his gaze of adoration and contented smile. He can't get any of them right. He's a technical skater, everyone says. Not a performer.

 

Yuri looks at the pictures on his walls, the glossy magazine photos of Viktor Nikiforov, and he thinks briefly that if it were Viktor skating towards his across the ice in Yuuko’s place, he wouldn't have any trouble looking adoring.

 

Then he presses his face into his pillow and tells himself it's a problem for another time.

 

It's barely six months later that Yuuko tells him she's pregnant, that she's getting married, all at once. She's always years and miles ahead of Yuri, and she's already made up her mind. She won't skate competitively again.

 

Yuri competes in singles from then on.

 

***  
Viktor’s first kiss was when he was sixteen, and it changed his life.

 

He’s known very early on that he was different, but for a long time different just meant better. He knows he isn't precisely the son his parents wanted, but he's made himself something better, something that soared high above the small lives of his family and the cramped, untidy apartment he’d grown up in. He’s made himself a star.

 

His senior division debut is in only a few months, and Viktor’s new coach Yakov Feltsman says he can win gold.

 

There's a rink in St. Petersburg where he practices alone, late at night after most of the other skaters are done for the day. There's nothing else Viktor wants to do, most days, except for skate.

 

A hockey team has practice late in the evening, just before the rink usually empties out; Viktor doesn't know what level of seriousness they're on, but they're about his age. They're the kind of boys he usually avoids, the kind who pull his hair and ask dubiously if figure skating is a real sport, and he doesn't talk to them.

 

But there is one boy, a boy with curly black hair and dark, serious eyes, who stays after hockey practice. He sits alone in the bleachers and he watches Viktor skate.

 

It makes him uncomfortable, at first, those eyes on him. He has no idea what the boy is thinking; his expression is inscrutable. At first, it makes his skating harder. But then he decides to simply embrace having an audience.

 

After a few days of being watched, he lets his hair out of his ponytail, lets it whirl around his face while he skates. That provokes no reaction, so he starts skating in his costume, a provocative black and partially translucent outfit with half a skirt.

 

He doesn't know what reaction he's trying to get, exactly, and he doesn't have any idea if the stare always focused on him is positive or negative.

 

But his silent observer never speaks to him.

 

So Viktor, after weeks of being watched, tears off his skates at the edge of the ice, tosses them aside, and stomps to the top back corner of the bleachers,

 

“Why are you watching me?” Viktor demands. “Who are you, some kind of spy for a competitor?”

 

The boy blinks at him in confusion. “I'm -- my name’s Mikhail,” he says. “I play hockey? I didn't even know you competed.”

 

Viktor finds this, more than anything, outrageous. “You didn't know I _competed_?” he says. “I can do a quadruple Lutz!”

 

Mikhail looks at him blankly.

 

“Viktor Nikiforov, junior Grand Prix gold medalist?”

 

Nothing.

 

“Why are you watching me skate, then?”

 

There's a look in Mikhail’s eyes when he answers that catches Viktor totally off guard. He doesn't know that he's ever been looked at that way before, certainly not this close up.

 

“I think you're beautiful,” he says.

 

Viktor folds his arms across his chest and answers the first thing that comes to mind, hardly knowing what he's saying. “Well, why don't you kiss me, then.”

 

He feels stupid as soon as he says it, half expects to be shoved away. Mikhail stands up slowly and takes a long, deep breath.

 

“Okay,” he says, and he does.

 

Viktor’s surprised by how much it makes him feel, like electricity is running through his entire body, like suddenly waking up from a deep sleep.

 

“Oh,” he says softly when Mikhail abruptly breaks away only seconds later.

 

Oh, he thinks, I should have known.

 

“I have to go,” Mikhail says abruptly. “I should go.”

 

He stumbles down the bleachers, not looking at Viktor.

 

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Viktor says. It suddenly feels important that he does.

 

“Maybe,” Mikhail says. “I don't know.”

 

Viktor comes to the rink early the next day and scans the ice, looking for curled dark hair. But he doesn't see it, and when he stands alone on the ice, looking up at the bleachers, there's no one there. There's no one watching.

 

It’s a lesson, Viktor thinks. He puts it into his skating.

 

***

 

No matter what anyone thinks, the posters aren't -- they aren't exactly about having a crush.

 

Yuri’s got an encyclopedia of coping mechanisms for anxiety. He bites his nails and chews at his lips, pulls at strings on his hoodies and tears erasers to bits. None of it really works, except for skating. Skating is what he's good at, the only thing he's really good at, and it makes his mind stay quiet.

 

But skating brings with it its own kind of anxiety, and for that he has Viktor Nikiforov.

 

Viktor's skating is calming in its magnificence. It reminds Yuri of what exactly he's striving for. If he could evoke one tenth of that feeling in the people who watch him skate, he thinks, all of his work would be worth it.

 

Sometimes, in fanciful moments, he thinks that if he could meet Viktor Nikiforov and tell him what it feels like to watch him skate, why Yuri is so devoted to trying to capture that feeling, Viktor would understand.

 

When he first moves to Detroit, he lives with a roommate in international student housing, and he brings his posters of Viktor with him.

 

His first roommate is from Austrailia, and he eyes both the posters and Yuri with pointed suspicion.

 

“Who's that guy?” he says dubiously, and Yuri suddenly feels horribly embarrassed.

 

“A professional figure skater,” he says, in English he’s rarely used outside of the classroom before. “I am, too. Well,” he amends, “trying to be.”

 

“Figure skating, huh? So like with a girl?”

 

Yuri fidgets awkwardly. “I'm, some people do, but I skate singles.”

 

“Oh.” His roommate looks away, uninterested. “That's different.”

 

Different. He says it a tone that makes it clear what he actually thinks. He feels like he should explain, maybe offer some defense of Viktor -- _he's one of the greatest athletes in the world, actually_ \-- as if that would explain why Yuri has pictures of him wearing spandex plastered all over his walls.

 

Yuri keeps the posters up for the rest of the semester, in a kind of defiant gesture, until his roommate swaps with someone else at the semester break. Then he pulls them all down before his new roommate can move in, placing them carefully at the back of a drawer.

 

Yuri never gets to know anyone he lives with in college too well; he leaves early in the morning and stays out late, and he’s away half the time for events and competitions anyway, missing more class than the football team. He doesn't make a lot of friends in college, but then he’d never made a lot of friends anywhere.

 

He keeps his Viktor Nikiforov posters out of public view until nearly three years later, when Phichit moves to Detroit as well and they started rooming together. Phichit, as a fellow skater, understands.

 

It’s about the sport, not about having a crush. It is.

 

***

Viktor’s life proceeds on what is unarguably an upwards trajectory.

 

There are a handful of other boys with dark, serious eyes, but never for very long. There is an apartment in St. Petersburg where he lives alone from the time he's eighteen, and increasingly long intervals between visits home.

 

He places fourth at his first Grand Prix final and third at that year’s Worlds, but he only gets better from there. He wins Olympic golds for Russia, which makes Yakov actually cry, and he's on TV commercials and front pages of newspapers and cereal boxes.

 

Before he knows it, he's 25 and he's one of the most eligible bachelors in Russian athletics, and every time he has dinner with a female skater or a woman who represents one of his sponsors, their photos are in magazines.

 

It's not a bad thing, not entirely.

 

Yakov goes over his television interviews with him the same way he does his performances on the ice. Image, Yakov says sternly when he's irritated with Viktor, is everything.

 

Viktor winces when he hears the interviewer ask the obvious question that he somehow never responds well to: “So, is there anyone special in your life?”

 

“Not at the moment,” his onscreen self responds brightly.

 

“You've gained quite a reputation as a heartthrob in the world of figure skating,” his interviewer presses on. “Are you hoping to settle down someday? What kind of girl is Viktor Nikiforov looking for?”

 

Viktor watches his own smile not quite reach his eyes. “I’d love to find that kind of connection,” he says, sounding rehearsed. “But with the amount of focus I have on my career, it's hard. I guess I'm just waiting for someone who can really understand me.”

 

“Not very convincing, Vitya,” Yakov says, hitting pause.

 

Viktor throws his head back and sighs. “I thought I was supposed to be a heartbreaker,” he says. “You want me to find a girlfriend now?”

 

“Audiences like to see a heartbreaker fall in love,” Yakov says. He shrugs, looking away from Viktor. “You see how much good publicity Georgi gets from being with that Anya.”

 

“Georgi’s not half the skater I am,” Viktor says.

 

Yakov sighs. “I know.”

 

Viktor fidgets with his scarf, wanting to get back to practice. There's nothing more boring than public relations.

 

“I just worry, Vitya,” Yakov says, and his voice is soft. “I know how hostile the public can be. If they want to turn on you, they will.”

 

“I'll be fine,” Viktor says.

 

His quadruple flip is flawless. He wins gold now nearly every time he competes. It will have to be enough.

 

***

 

“So, did you see Viktor’s latest interview?” Yuuko says eagerly over Skype.

 

They don't talk enough anymore -- Yuri feels guilty for that, but between his competition schedule and her life, running the ice rink at home plus raising three toddlers, never mind the time difference, there’s barely any time. Still, whenever he sees her he feels like it's hardly been any time at all, especially when they're talking about skating in the way they did when they were kids.

 

“I saw it,” Yuri says. “He seems pretty confident he's going to win at Worlds, even though Giacometti’s doing more quads now. I hope he's right.”

 

Yuri’s finish at Four Continents was respectable, but not enough to advance to Worlds. Yuuko doesn't mention that, though.

 

“Those reporters ask him a lot of questions about his love life, huh,” Yuuko says with a laugh. “It makes you wonder if any of those rumors about all the women he dates are true.”

 

Yuri hates thinking about that. It's so predatory, the way those sporting gossip sites compete to see who can get the most photos of Viktor with different women.

 

“Probably not,” he says. “I never thought he was that kind of person.”

 

“Neither did I,” Yuuko agrees. “You know, some of the skating otaku websites say it’s all just for show and he’s really interested in men.”

 

Yuri’s seen those websites. Yuri scolds himself every time for ever looking. It's an insult to Viktor -- he's an artist, an athlete. Not a celebrity.

 

And it's probably not true, anyway. People will say that about any figure skater. It probably means nothing.

 

“What?” he says.

 

“I'm just saying,” Yuuko says hastily, “it must be hard for him, if it's true! Being from Russia, it's much worse than here. Or America. I don't know, I just -- you don't think there's anything wrong with it, right, Yuri?”

 

Yuri laughs a little hysterically, though he isn't quite sure why. “No, I don't.”

 

Yuuko looks down, away from her webcam. “I guess I shouldn't have mentioned it,” she says.

 

Yuri knows better than to think she was really just curious about Viktor. She was asking about him, trying to broach the topic in that delicate way that people do.

 

“I just don't want to speculate about people I might compete against someday,” Yuri says.

 

He can't tell her that he just doesn't know the answer.

 

***

 

Viktor couldn't remember the last time someone had asked him to dance.

 

There was an arcane social ritual to banquets, one that took athletes years to master and involved a concentrated effort to get in as much face time as possible with as many sponsors as you could. It was an art form Viktor had mastered, and he would have spent the majority of the evening teaching it to Yuri Plietsky, the little terror Yakov had decided he should mentor.

 

But then there was the other Yuri. Yuri Katsuki. The sixth place finisher, over a hundred points behind him, no one Viktor had ever paid attention to simply because he wasn't a threat.

 

But at this year’s Grand Prix, well, he’s noticed.

 

Yuri Katsuki is, for lack of a better word, intense. It seems that every time Viktor turned around during practice or an interview, Yuri was watching him. He wasn't quite certain what it meant, but it intrigued him, that focused stare. Yuri Katsuki had dark, serious eyes.

 

He’d watched out of the corner of his eye as Yuri downed what looked like a dozen glasses of champagne. And when Yuri finally set one of them down with a clink of finality and strode across the dance floor with a new confidence, it’s Viktor he walks straight towards.

 

“Hi, Viktor,” he says conversationally, like they're old friends who have spoken hundreds of times before. “Congratulations on the gold medal.”

 

“Oh -- thank you,” Viktor says. Yuri Plietsky glares.

 

Yuri Katsuki draws himself up to his full height, which is noticeably shorter than Viktor’s, and extends his hand like something out of a Jane Austen novel.

 

“Dance with me?” he says, and it's barely a question.

 

It's not what he should be doing. It's the opposite, in fact, of what he should be doing, and what he has been doing for the past ten years. Yuri Plietsky is staring daggers into his back. There will be photos all over social media in the morning.

 

Viktor takes Yuri’s hand.

 

Later, he will think that maybe it was because he was tired, or had had too much to drink himself, or because he knew this would likely be his last season and he may as well end on a high note. He’ll tell himself that, but he’ll know that it was really Yuri Katsuki himself. Yuri’s eyes.

 

He really does dance like it’s some kind of antiquated courtship ritual. He leads without asking. He whirls Viktor around the ballroom to resounding applause, dips him so low his hair almost touches the floor.

 

“I know you already know this,” Yuri tells him, laughing, “but you're beautiful.”

 

Viktor did know it, but the way Yuri Katsuki said it -- he hadn't known about that before.

 

It seems like hardly any time at all before Yuri Plietsky comes up behind them and taps him on the shoulder. “Viktor, are you going to do this all night?” he snaps.

 

Yuri Katsuki answers before Viktor can. “Tell you what,” he says, leaning down so he’s on the other Yuri’s level. “If you can beat me in a dance-off, I'll stop dancing with him.”

 

Viktor watches -- he watches all of Yuri’s dance moves, watches with a kind of dizzy disbelief as Chris challenged Yuri to a pole-dancing competition. He's shockingly, terrifying good at it.

 

And Yuri finds his way back to Viktor, after a few more glasses of champagne, less dancing now and more clinging.

 

“You'll do it, right, Viktor?” Yuri says in English, and holds on so tight Viktor thinks his ribs might bruise. “Be my coach!”

 

“Oh,” Viktor says, expressively.

 

“Viktor,” Yuri breathes, and it's soft, reverential. He's pressed his whole body as close to Viktor as he can get, in front of everyone, in front of all their competitors, and Viktor isn't letting go. He doesn't precisely remember how to breathe.

 

Yuri brushes the hair out of Viktor’s eyes, stares directly at him with eyes shining. “Viktor,” he says again, and then with a kind of slurred eloquence, “Sometimes it feels like my life only makes sense when I'm watching you skate.”

 

Viktor stays frozen, rooted to the spot, until Yuri’s coach seizes his pupil by the collar of his jacket and saves Viktor the indignity of having to reply.

 

It takes Celestino’s best efforts to separate Yuri from Viktor, to steer him out of into hallway while Yuri protests in a mixture of English and Japanese.

 

“Wait!” Viktor says, and Yuri turns to look at him, eyes wide with hope. Viktor does the only thing he can think to do in front of a hundred people, which is scrawl his personal phone number onto a cocktail napkin and press it into Yuri’s hand.

 

“Call me,” he says, and Yuri Katsuki kisses his hand.

 

“So,” Yuri Plietsky says flatly into the ensuing silence, “who won?”

 

Viktor doesn't respond.

 

“Poor Viktor,” Christophe says. “He's finally been seduced.”

 

Yuri snorts scornfully. “Well, I've got enough blackmail material for the rest of my career,” he says.

 

That doesn't matter to Viktor. He floats back to the hotel with an unfamiliar, glowing warmth in his chest. Alone in his room, he can't stop himself from doing a small, triumphant twirl.

 

For the first time in years, he feels hopeful.

 

But Yuri Katsuki doesn't call.

 

He doesn't find Viktor the next morning at the hotel or at the airport, and he doesn't call, or email, or send him a direct message on Twitter (which he updates infrequently anyway -- Viktor checked).

 

He watches the Japanese nationals live, Yuri’s first performance since the Grand Prix. When Yuri falls, Viktor tries not to see it as a sign that he could only reach his full potential with better coaching.

 

When he finds, and runs through Google Translate, an article on the fifth page of Yuri’s search results in which he says he’d first wanted to become a professional skater after watching a performance by Viktor Nikiforov, Viktor tries not to see that as a sign either, although it really is a persuasive argument in favor of destiny.

 

When he sees the video, Viktor stops trying to talk himself out of it. Yuri is the type for grand gestures, clearly. Viktor will reply in kind.

 

***

 

Sometimes Viktor reminds Yuri of a story he’d read in a mythology class in college and half-remembered, about an artist who fell so in love with his sculpture of a woman that she came to life.

 

It wasn't the same, of course -- he hasn't created Viktor, nothing like that-- but Yuri thought there was a similar quality to how it felt to see the person who’d occupied his imagination for so long in the mundane, real world, doing things like feeding table scraps to his dog or talking to Mari about J-Pop. He was fantasy made flesh, too good to be true.

 

The sculpture-woman had broken the artist’s heart at the end, Yuri remembered that much.

 

He couldn't understand what Viktor was doing here, what Viktor wanted. Certainly he spoke passionately about Yuri’s skating; he constantly told him he could win if he just wanted it hard enough and put in enough work. Yuri was sure he was devoting more energy to training than he ever had and that he'd never wanted anything more than he wanted to show Viktor he could win a Grand Prix gold.

 

But sometimes, to Viktor, skating seemed like almost an afterthought. He stayed out all night drinking and lost focus in the middle of his sentences. He pestered Yuri’s mother into teaching him how to make katsudon and let the Nishigori triplets put scrunchies in his hair and paint his fingernails.

 

He would drag Yuri away from practice on the slightest pretense, to go sightseeing or visit some new restaurant he’d read about online. Viktor liked candlelit dinners and long walks on the beach, and he liked making sure Yuri was there for them and that Yuri enjoyed them just as much.

 

It felt, sometimes, like being on the world's most improbable date.  

 

“So who is it?” Viktor asks him one day during practice, skating circles around Yuri after observing his Eros performance with a critical eye. “Who are you thinking of?”

 

“When I skate?” Yuri bites his lip. There was only one person he ever thought of during the performance, but he wasn't about to admit to that. “I -- no one in particular, it's just -- it's just a story.”

 

“Hmm.” Viktor looks disappointed by that. “But where does that longing come from?”

 

Yuri swallows hard. “Longing?”

 

Viktor keeps circling. It reminds Yuri a little bit of a shark. “I could see it in your performance of my routine and now I finally see it in your Eros,” he says. “Longing. But you tell me it is not Yuuko or Minako or any ex-lover. I do not know how you can skate like that if there is not someone you desire.”

 

 _You,_ Yuri thinks and doesn't say. _It's always you_.

 

It's a recent revelation, which Yuri is well aware is absurd of him, after all those years of staring at Viktor in form-fitting costumes and obsessing over the way his hair fell over his eyes.

 

On some level, he’d probably always known what he felt, as desperately as he’d tried to avoid thinking about it. The way he’d avoided thinking about why he didn't have crushes on the girls in his classes, why he felt nothing when Yuuko kissed him. The way he avoided thinking about the boys he’d danced with at college parties when he was too drunk to think anything of it or the boys who Phichit had hinted wouldn't mind seeing Yuri again when he was slightly more sober.

 

He hadn't thought about it. It had always just been so much more trouble than it was worth.

 

But now Viktor Nikiforov is real, and here, and has finally stopped skating in circles to look at Yuri with raised eyebrows. He has perfect eyebrows. Perfect everything.

 

“Come on, Yuri,” Viktor says, drawing his name out into a plaintive drawl. “I know there must be someone.”

 

“No one in particular,” Yuri says, and Viktor responds with a dramatic, disappointed sigh.

 

“If you say so,” he says. “That's enough practice for today.”

 

Viktor disappears that evening, while Yuri’s out for a run, taking Maccachin with him and leaving no indication of where he’d gone. A few months ago, Yuri might have worried Viktor had simply and abruptly decided to leave for good, but he knows better now.

 

He finds Viktor out on the beach, sitting in the sand and watching Maccachin run through the surf and snap at the waves. He doesn't say anything when Yuri sits down next to him; he seemed neither surprised nor annoyed that Yuri is there.

 

Yuri watches him, drawing aimless patterns in the sand. He looks pensive, far away.

 

“I was thinking about what you said,” Yuri says. “About my skating.”

 

“Hmm?” Viktor’s eyes are still on the horizon.

 

Yuri takes a deep breath. Viktor's never been judgmental, he reminds himself; not about this, not about real feelings. “I don't think it was longing, exactly,” he says. “More like… loneliness. But if there was someone I was thinking of, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be -- a girl.”

 

Yuri closes his eyes for a moment, hardly believing he’d been able to say it, and when he opens them Viktor’s looking right at him.

 

“Yuri,” he says softly. “You wouldn't let me tell you about my ex-lovers before, but maybe now that you've told me that I should, yes?”

 

“Okay,” Yuri says.

 

So Viktor does, telling him the stories of a half-dozen small heartbreaks. It surprises Yuri much less than it once might have that all of Viktor’s stories are about men, or that a significant portion of them are internationally famous athletes. The way Viktor talks about them, they don't sound like glamorous affairs, but strangely bleak and hollow. “Skating just gets in the way,” Viktor says more than once.

 

“It must be… hard for you,” Yuri says when Viktor trails off to a conclusion. “I'm sorry.”

 

Viktor shrugs. “It's not easy for anyone.” He pauses for a long moment. “I haven't spoken to my parents in five years,” he says eventually. “They love the Orthodox Church the way you and I love skating. Like it's everything in the world. I forgot -- well, maybe I didn't forget -- that they were coming to visit, and, anyway. They walk in and there’s a half-naked man sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of vodka wearing my Olympic team jacket, and I suppose they understood.”

 

Yuri winces, but Viktor simply shrugs as if it's nothing.

 

 _Unconditional love,_ Yuri thinks. _Like the kind a parent has for their child._ His heart aches for Viktor, for this person he thought he’d understood so well before they'd ever met.

 

“Viktor,” Yuri says quietly. “You're worth so much more than that.”

 

Viktor holds out a hand to help Yuri to his feet when the beach is getting dark and they decide to go back. Yuri can't tell if he means the gesture to be significant, but it feels important. It always does.

 

***

 

Viktor had thought he’d know what love was before.

 

It seemed incredibly foolish now, because all of that paled in comparison to what he felt for Yuri Katsuki.

 

When Viktor first got to Japan, the contrast between the Yuri who had swept him off his feet in Sochi and the Yuri who stuttered and tripped over his own feet at the sight of him was worrying. He wouldn't have been the first athlete to only be interested in Viktor when he was drunk, and Viktor’s initial assumption was that he was hiding a girlfriend somewhere and that this whole excursion was going to be an unmitigated disaster.

 

But he understood Yuri better now. He's different when he's sober, shy and nervous but hard-working, determined, and always kind. Impossibly endearing. If he wants to take things slow, Viktor can do that.

 

Yuri’s not simple or easy to understand, and Viktor feels triumphant every time something he says seems to help Yuri with his skating, every time Yuri doesn't shy away from his touch, it feels like the best kind of victory. The best except for when Yuri wins in competition.

 

“You were so amazing,” Viktor can't stop telling him after the Japanese regional qualifiers. “No one can doubt my coaching abilities or your talent as a skater now. Yuri, you were perfect.”

 

Yuri laughs in disbelief at that. “Perfect? You had a lot of criticisms earlier.”

 

“Of your technical work,” Viktor says breezily. “Your performance, that was perfect. The feeling is there. Your jumps, we will work on.”

 

He presses Yuri into going to a nice restaurant to celebrate their first victory as a team, ignoring the urge to criticize Yuri’s tie. It's nice that he makes the effort to dress up. Viktor shouldn't over-analyze what it means.

 

He does anyway, and it's really his own fault that he’s disappointed when Yuri doesn't remark on his new cologne on how much effort he’d put into styling his hair. It's not a date. Despite Viktor’s best efforts, it is not a date.

 

But Yuri grins at him across the table and drinks exactly one glass of wine, so it's something, maybe. Or it could be.

 

“I've never had that much fun skating in competition before,” Yuri tells him. “It's nice to actually enjoy it.”

 

“You don't usually?” Viktor says, surprised.

 

Yuri shakes his head. “I mean, I love skating. When I'm doing it alone. But when people are watching me, it's… it's like people are looking into your soul and judging it. Do you ever feel like that?”

 

Competing has always been Viktor’s favorite part of skating. It's a validation that he can't get from anything else, and he suddenly feels deeply sad that Yuri doesn't get to feel the same joy that Viktor used to when he won medals. But then, he thinks, that type of validation does get rather old after a while.

 

“No, I guess I don't,” Viktor says. He doesn't add that he feels more like he's being judged and found wanting all time he's off the ice.

 

“That's why I’ve never gotten contact lenses,” Yuri says, laughing at himself a little. “So I don't have to see the audience.”

 

Viktor watches him take a nervous sip of wine, and a disturbing thought suddenly occurs to him. “Hey, Yuri, you don't feel like that when I'm watching you skate, do you?”

 

Yuri’s eyes widen. “No!” he says. “You're not like that, you -- you understand what I'm trying to say.”

 

“I hope I do,” Viktor says quietly, and Yuri’s knee knocks reassuringly against his under the table.

 

Viktor is terribly, wonderfully in love with him.

 

Someday soon, he's confident, Yuri will figure that out.

 

***

 

“Yuri,” Viktor sing-songs after Yuri has forced him to put all of his clothes back on, starting determinedly at a wall, and practically dragged him out of the hot pot restaurant. “Yuri, don't you like me very much?”

 

“What gave you that impression?” Yuri says grimly.

 

He wishes it were the case. Watching Viktor drink so much that he felt compelled to throw his clothing at half the international skating community and attempt, with singular focus, to kiss Yuri’s ear, had done nothing except remind him that he liked Viktor entirely too much.

 

Viktor breaks into a smile that's like the sun emerging from a thick fog over the ocean. “Oh, right,” he says, “you love me.”

 

Viktor is glued to his side, making every effort to shove his hands into the pockets of Yuri’s coat, apparently because he's cold or just because he wants to. “You're getting too good at Japanese,” Yuri says. “And keep your hands to yourself, please! We’re trying to walk.”

 

That has the opposite of the intended effect. Instead, Viktor freezes on the sidewalk, looking disheartened. “Yuri,” he says sadly, and then a moment later, “You love me, but you don't want me.”

 

He says it like it’s a statement of fact, and his expression is close to miserable.

 

Yuri has had inklings of what Viktor might want from him, when he flips the hair out of his eyes to look directly at him and talk about seduction. He couldn't make it add up in his mind. It was unbelievable enough that Viktor would be interested in his skating. Anything else was inconceivable. It had to be a coaching tactic, a well-meaning but thoughtless tease.

 

But Viktor looked terribly serious now, and he was staring at Yuri like he was breaking his heart.

 

“Viktor,” Yuri says, and starts to reach out to him.

 

He hasn't seen more of Viktor tonight than he had before, but there was something uniquely compelling about Viktor unbuttoning his shirt half an inch away from him, staring at him with glazed eyes.

 

There’s something about the way Viktor looks right now, unsteady on his feet, shirt buttoned wrong and eyes pleading.

 

He’s too beautiful to be real. He’s the best thing that has ever happened to Yuri. He is incredibly drunk.

 

“Let's talk about it back at the hotel, okay?” Yuri says.

 

“Okay,” Viktor says. “Hold my hand?”

 

Yuri does.

 

Back at the hotel room, Viktor falls into bed and drags Yuri with him, both of them fully clothed. He's all sharp angles and pointed elbows, but he seems to have melted slightly, limp enough to be dead weight. Resistance seems more or less useless at this stage.

 

“You're going to be amazing tomorrow,” Viktor tells him.

 

He lets Yuri squirm away from him enough so that they're not touching and pull the sheets over both of them, which seems more appropriate, somehow.

 

Rationally -- none of this is remotely appropriate. Yuri has never been more aware of his heartbeat hammering in his ears.

 

“You're going to be so good,” Viktor mumbles, pressing a brief kiss to Yuri’s hair. “You're so gorgeous. I know you'll win.”

 

His eyes flutter closed and he presses his face against Yuri’s shoulder, smiling.

 

Yuri lies next to him in the dark with his hands over his face, listening to the restless beating of his own heart, for what feels like hours.

 

Somehow, Viktor wakes up before him in the morning.

 

“Aren't you hungover?” Yuri says resentfully, watching Viktor bounce around the room chattering about Yuri’s routines while Yuri struggles to find the energy to put his socks on.

 

“I'm Russian,” Viktor says with a wave of his hand, like that’s significant. “I know my limits.”

 

He must see something in Yuri’s expression that makes him pause, because he holds still for a moment and looks abruptly worried. “I'm sorry if I was, ah, clingy last night,” Viktor says haltingly. “But Yuri, you know I --”

 

“Viktor,” Yuri cuts him off, because he's already on the verge of panic. He closes his eyes, hands clenching into fists. He couldn't have this conversation now and be expected to skate afterwards, to hold it together. He think about what he could have, what Viktor was offering. Or how temporary it would all inevitably be.

 

“We can talk about it after the competition, alright?” Yuri says, his voice coming out choked and strange.

 

He feels Viktor’s hand skim across his cheek, brushing gently at his hair, and he opens his eyes.

 

“Later, then,” Viktor says softly, a promise, an encouragement. “We’ll talk about it.”

  
***  
They don't talk about it.

 

Instead, Viktor does what he always does, he thinks, which is sometime stupid and reckless and selfish that he’d barreled into headfirst without thinking. Instead of waiting and listening and talking about Yuri’s feelings, Viktor throws himself onto the ice and into Yuri’s arms and kisses him. On international television.

 

Stupid, he knows. Stupid and thoughtless and too much and all wrong.

 

But at least, he thinks, watching Yuri wave off the pool of reporters surrounding him and attempt to get to the locker room, Yuri had caught him. Yuri had kissed him back.

 

And people had cheered.

 

Yuri vanishing through the locker room door makes him nervous, especially when the press whirls on him instead.

 

“No questions right now!” Viktor tells them, bouncing on the balls of his feet with pent-up energy.

 

He should have known better. But Yuri is so beautiful when he skates that it makes Viktor’s heart hurt, and Viktor has been waiting so, so long to kiss him. If he’d had any rational thought process, it might have been that this could be the only time Yuri would accept being kissed at all, before he could step off the ice.

 

Viktor waits out the reporters’ questions, and they walk away eventually, perfectly capable of writing their articles without explicit comment. They know Viktor’s secret now.

 

And Yuri’s. If it was a secret to Yuri or if he had wanted it to be. Viktor is an idiot.

 

It seems like ages before Yuri comes back, wearing his glasses and sweatpants and national team jacket. Viktor's heart swells with warmth just at the sight of him.

 

“Hi,” Yuri says.

 

They are, blessedly, now the only two people in this hallway.

 

“Hello,” Viktor says. “Yuri.. are you angry with me?”

 

Yuri’s eyes widen in shock. He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the gelled waves. “Angry? Viktor... I've wanted to kiss you since I was twelve years old.”

 

Twelve? That can't be possible. Viktor would have been sixteen, skinny and too tall in costumes he outgrew as soon as they were finished. Viktor feels slightly dizzy.

 

“I mean, maybe I didn't know it at the time,” Yuri says awkwardly. He's looking at the floor, but with one hand holding Viktor’s sleeve. “And it's completely different now that I know you, I mean you're not just someone in magazines anymore, you're--” He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “You’re you. And you can kiss me. Any time you want.”

 

So Viktor does. He kisses Yuri’s lips, and then his nose and his forehead and his chin and, for good measure, the silver medal around Yuri’s neck, and Yuri laughs in a way that's pure happiness.

 

Yuri takes off the medal and loops it around Viktor’s neck. “This is yours, really,” he says, which isn't true at all, but does make Viktor feel very weak in the knees.

 

“It's been a long time since I wore silver,” he teases, and Yuri pulls him down by the medal and kisses him with something like Eros.

 

***

 

Yuri has been skating Viktor’s free skate from last season in exhibition. It makes the rumors about them worse, and part of Yuri loves the rumors, now that there's some truth to them. Loves knowing that he has something no one else ever seems to, Viktor’s full and undivided attention. Whether he wins gold or not, the rest of the world can envy Yuri Katsuki for that.

  
"I've been thinking about my exhibition skate," Yuri says as he’s lacing up his skates for practice. "I..." He has to close his eyes for a moment, for courage. "I want you there."  
  
Viktor blinks at him. "Of course I'll be there. I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

 

“Not like that,” Yuri says. “I mean…”

 

Viktor’s sitting very close to him, which he's always done, but has gotten even worse about how that they're officially, sort of, something. Something more than they were, anyway. Yuri doesn't like to think about it too hard, because he always feels like if he tries to close his hands around it it'll evaporate, like smoke.

 

It's very distracting, though, when Viktor does things like flutter his eyelashes and put his hand on Yuri’s thigh while they’re supposed to be talking about skating.

 

“I mean, I think we should skate it together,” Yuri says. “After the final.”

 

He's been thinking about it for days, and there's something about that routine that's just off now. It had been about longing, like Viktor had said. A piece for someone who was lonely, had never understood love. Yuri’s story was different now. It belonged in the form of a duet.

 

Viktor's eyes immediately sparkle with surprise. “You mean like a pairs skate?” The excitement in his voice is a clear indication that Yuri’s said the right thing. “Really?”

 

“If you want to,” Yuri says, and Viktor throws himself into a hug so enthusiastic that Yuri almost topples over.

 

“Yuri, this is so exciting!” Viktor exclaims, practically vibrating with joy. “I'll have to work on the choreography, but it shouldn't be too hard to adapt.” He pulls back slightly and looks at Yuri, eyes shining. “I know we’ll be amazing, skating together. I can't wait for people to see.”

 

***

 

When they get to Rostelecom, the nice desk clerk at the city’s best hotel points out that they've booked a room with only one bed.

 

“No worries!” she says, barely looking at either of them -- obviously not a fan of skating. “We have some vacancies, I'll get you one with two singles!”

 

Viktor opens his mouth to correct her -- he’s perfectly aware of what kind of hotel rooms he’s booking, thank you very much -- but Yuri cuts him off. “That's fine! Thank you.”

 

Viktor shoots him a pouty look as he fishes his credit card out of his bag. Yuri’s blushing to the tips of his ears.

 

The desk clerk seems oblivious to all of this.

 

“There's nothing to be embarrassed about, you know,” Viktor says in the elevator. He sounds a little huffy, a little irritated, when he’d only meant to be comforting. “I don't cars what she thinks.”

 

Yuri, holding both of their bags, looks immensely skeptical. “I'm not embarrassed, Viktor… it's just personal. And we’re in Russia.”

 

Russia, Russia. Sometimes Viktor hates the place, hates the word. His whole life, he has skated for Russia, and put everything else aside.

 

He studies Yuri, his shoulders slumped downwards and his eyes pointed firmly at the panel of elevator buttons, chewing nervously at his lip. Viktor will have to remind him about chapstick later.

 

It's not that Yuri’s trying to hide anything, Viktor realizes, just that he still thinks of himself as someone modest and private, someone whose personal life shouldn't be on display. Someone who finds it unbearably revealing to tell a hotel clerk he doesn't want a room with twin beds, even if the person he's sharing with is someone he's already kissed on international television.

 

“Okay,” Viktor says. “Don't bite your lip like that.”

 

In their room, Yuri drops their suitcases and immediately pushes one of the twin beds to the center of the room so that their edges are touching. “Happy now?” he asks Viktor, with a slight roll of his eyes.

 

This is another game they play, pretending they are simply doing what Viktor wants instead of what makes them both happy.

 

“Delighted,” he smiles, falling backwards onto one of the beds as gracefully and seductively as possible.

 

As it turns out, they spend most of the night occupying half the space anyway.

 

As it turns out, before his short program, Yuri pulls him close by his tie and whispers “I'll show my love to the whole of Russia.”

 

He’s a very self-contradictory man, Yuri Katsuki, but Viktor doesn't mind.

 

***

 

When Yuri gets back to Japan, he discovers that his parents are vastly less interested in Viktor Nikiforov, world’s top figure skater, than they are in Viktor, Yuri’s Boyfriend.

 

The world seemed both too big and too small for what they were, but Viktor had used it himself, a few days after the Cup of China over breakfast. “I've never really been someone's coach or someone's boyfriend before,” he’d mused, “and now I get to be both! You'll tell me if I’m doing alright, right, Yuri?”

 

His smile was playful, but his tone was sincere. Yuri stuttered something about how he was perfect.

 

Back in Japan after Rostelecom, the Katsukis are marvelously unconcerned about their son kissing his figure skating coach on live television, or the fact that the world is sharply divided over whether to love him or hate him for it.

 

There's only one remark on it, from his mother: “Yuri, you have so many phone calls! Interview requests!”

 

They certainly pay more attention to Viktor than before, however. Yuri’s mother can't stop asking him questions.

 

_What's it like in St. Petersburg? Probably freezing in the winter!_

 

_It's beautiful, we should all go and visit!_

 

_Viktor, when do we get to meet your family?_

 

_Oh, it's just me and Maccachin._

 

_So have you thought about having your own someday? Mari certainly won't consider it --_

 

_Okay! Yuri interrupts frantically then. That's enough._

 

Yuri catches Mari sneaking a photo of them sitting together -- “Just for my Instagram followers!” she insists -- and Viktor slides an arm around Yuri’s shoulder and grins at the camera.

 

Yuri’s father even corners him while he's washing dishes and tells him, with a fixed, serious look, that he's proud of him. He's clearly not referring to his skating.

 

Yuuko and Minako had both said the same thing. Yuri isn't sure what, exactly, warrants feeling proud, but he does feel a bit of it at the end of the night when he announces that he's exhausted and should get some sleep, and Viktor follows him as if it's only natural that they’d share Yuri’s room now.

 

“Macca wouldn't leave your mother’s side all night,” Viktor says when the dog doesn't follow them. “It'll be impossible to get him to leave Japan now.”

 

There's a hint in that, and Viktor is sitting cross-legged in the center of Yuri’s bed, scrolling through his phone. It feels like so many other things about Viktor -- comfortable, once you get past the staggering surreality. Yuri wonders if he's noticed the paler squares of paint on the walls.

 

“We’re getting a lot of publicity,” Viktor mutters, still looking at his phone, and Yuri sits down to peek over his shoulder.

  
Whatever he's reading, it's in Russian -- Yuri can speak a little now, phrases Viktor has taught him, but he certainly can't read the Cyrillic alphabet.  
  
He catches a photo, though, from after the short program, in the kiss and cry, of Viktor kissing his skate.  
  
He'd done it without preamble, before Yuri had time to react, sinking to his knees -- he always does that any time he has an excuse for it, pretending it's innocent when Yuri knows it's completely calculated -- and raising Yuri's foot to his lips, worshipful. "So beautiful," he'd said, half to Yuri and half to the reporters frantically snapping photos of them.  
  
"What are they saying?" Yuri asks now, almost afraid of the answer.  
  
"Nothing but good things about your skating," Viktor hums. "They're not very happy with me, though."  
  
That makes Yuri nervous, a sharp spike of anxiety in his chest. It's one thing to think, on the ice, about stealing Viktor's heart from skating, having him all to himself and making sure the world knows it. It's quite another to face the reality of what it means that people see Viktor do things like that, kiss him in public like it doesn't matter. What they must say.  
  
"What -- what do you mean?"  
  
"Oh, you know." Viktor turns so he's facing Yuri, and he looks -- he looks happy, smug almost, smiling a smile that borders on a smirk. "I'm an embarrassment to Russian figure skating, naturally. I'm shameless, really. No self-control. And that's the best of it." He grins brightly. "I've never been hated before, Yuri. It's exciting."  
  
He kisses Yuri to punctuate that, slow and soft but full of meaning, intention. Viktor kisses with a kind of single-minded intensity that Yuri thinks must be rarely applied to the pursuit. He kisses like he's trying to be the best in the world at it and Yuri is the only judge.  
  
"Well, you don't have to do things like that in public,"  Yuri mumbles, trying to collect any thoughts or words at all when Viktor is looking at him like that.  
  
"But I want to," Viktor says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Besides, it makes you skate better."  
  
Yuri can't deny that.  
  
"What if," he says, "I make you forget all about them?"  
  
Viktor's eyes get even bigger and brighter, if such a thing is possible.  
  
"They're right, you know," Viktor says quietly, confessional in the dark of Yuri's bedroom. "Can't resist you."  
  
***  


“Yuri,” Viktor says, “you've been a professional skater for too long to pretend you don't care what you look like.”

 

On the other side of the dressing room door, Yuri laughs, fumbling with the tiny buttons of the gray (charcoal, Viktor said) suit Viktor had pressed into his hands. “What if I really don't care?” he says.

 

“Hmm, I don't think so,” Viktor trills. “You care about what you look like on the ice, right? So why’s it different the rest of the time?”

 

“Because the rest of the time I’m not performing,” Yuri grumbles. “Okay, I'm opening the door now. You can help me with this tie.”

 

When Viktor squeezes through the door, he looks immediately thrilled, as if his vision of what Yuri should be wearing has finally been realized. Yuri can't help but smile back at him.

 

Viktor’s fingers loop the light pink fabric of the tie he’s wearing around itself several times in a series of quick, elegant motions. “This is called a rose knot,” he says, looking at it with satisfaction when he's finished. “It's very romantic.”

 

“It's a _tie_ ,” Yuri protests, but he falls silent as Viktor traces a finger down along the material, skimming the buttons of his shirt.

 

“You look very handsome,” Viktor says, in his low, accented voice that makes Yuri shiver. “Look.”

 

He spins Yuri around to face the mirror, not fully letting him go, cashmere sweater pressed against the wool Yuri’s wearing.

 

Yuri looks at the two of them in the mirror together, and it seems less absurd than it used to, the two of them together. He almost looks like someone who belongs here, belongs with Viktor.

 

Maybe the rose knot is a little romantic.

 

“I guess it looks nice,” Yuri says.

 

Viktor beams at him over his shoulder. “So can I buy it for you?”

 

“If you really want to,” Yuri says reluctantly. Viktor throws his arms around him, apparently overjoyed at the prospect of spending thousands of euros on a birthday present.

 

“Thank you kiss?” Viktor says, tugging on Yuri’s sleeve.

 

Yuri obliges him, and he can feel Viktor smile against his lips.

 

It's a nice suit. He doesn't deserve it, Yuri thinks, but he'll just have to get Viktor something even better in return.

 

***

 

After they leave dinner out of continued commitment to avoiding JJ Leroy, most of the other skaters and associated hangers-on catch cabs to their various destinations, leaving Viktor and Yuri with a mixture of taunts (from Yurio) and well-wishes (from everyone else).

 

Yuri, though, had found an English-language map of the arcane system of Barcelona’s metro, and he insists on plotting a route back to the hotel, leading Viktor by the hand.

 

When they find the right stop, the subway car is almost empty, and Viktor does a little twirl around one of the poles.

 

“Yuri, do you still remember any of your dance moves? I could show you.”

 

“Stop,” Yuri pleads, closing his eyes half in laughter and half in genuine embarrassment. He mutters something self-effacing in Japanese, and Viktor falls into the seat next to him, looping an arm around his shoulder.

 

Viktor thinks, glancing again at his ring, that he's going to spend the rest of his life trying to make Yuri laugh.

 

“I can't believe you didn't remember the night we met,” Viktor sighs. “It was really very beautiful.”

 

Yuri winces. “That’s not what those photos looked like…”

 

“It was! You asked me to dance with you, and it just -- made everything else at that banquet go away.” Viktor gently pries apart Yuri’s worriedly twisting hands and threads their fingers together. “You made me not care what anyone there thought of me, except you.”

 

Yuri smiles, and there's a long moment of not-uncomfortable silence. Then he looks up, clearly stricken with another worry. “Viktor? Were you serious about, um, getting married?”

 

Viktor had been thinking about it since their reunion at the airport. He’d thought Yuri had the same idea when he’d dragged Viktor into that jewelry store and dropped an amount he clearly couldn't afford on what were, after all, obviously wedding rings. It had surprised him that Yuri had simply called it a good luck charm, talking only about skating, but it was very Yuri, and endearing in a way. With their friends, though, Viktor hadn't wanted to correct their assumptions, hadn't wanted to deny those rings the meaning he was hoping they had.

 

And he hadn't wanted to pass up an opportunity to make sure Yuri knew exactly what he wanted.

 

“I was serious,” Viktor says. “Do you want that?”

 

“It's not legal,” Yuri says. “In Japan. Or Russia.”

 

Viktor shrugs. “So we’ll have a ceremony and then we can have another one when it is. It's not about what anyone's government thinks. Just us.”

 

Yuri’s eyes are sparkling again. “Then yes, I want to,” he says. “I…” He pauses, clearly trying to gather his courage, and Viktor waits patiently. “I never want to let you go.”

 

It's exactly what Viktor wanted to hear, and he manages to get in quite a few kisses before Yuri insists they stop before they miss their metro station.

 

“I'll win gold for you,” Yuri says very seriously, running his fingers through Viktor’s hair. “You deserve the best.”

 

***

  
"You can't come back to Russia even if you want to," Yurio tells Viktor, out on the coast of Barcelona.  
  
Viktor smiles. He feels very far away from Russia, from all of this. "Not true," he says lightly. "I was there for Rostelecom."  
  
Yurio kicks at the sand. "You know what I mean, idiot!"  
  
Viktor does. "Yakov must really hate me now, hmm?" he says.  
  
"No," Yurio scowls. "He should."  
  
"Maybe," Viktor agrees, but he thinks that it couldn't matter less if the whole country hates him. His eyes go to the ring on his finger, foreign and new and beautiful, and Yurio's eyes follow.  
  
"I don't understand you," Yurio says, looking away. "You were a world champion, and you know what you are now, at home? A joke. You're a disgrace to the whole sport."  
  
There's venom in his words. Viktor can tell it's the kind that comes from buried shame.  
  
"You should be thanking me," Viktor says lightly. "Now you won't have to be the first."  
  
He regrets it as soon as he says it. Yurio's angry and under too much pressure and only a child, still, and his eyes are full of fear.  
  
"What are you -- forget it. Go to hell, Nikiforov," Yurio says, with a kind of quiet anger Viktor's never heard from him before.  
  
"I'm sorry, Yurio," he says uncertainly, and reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
Yurio spins away from him, arms folded, glaring. "Don't touch me," he says. "Just remember I'm going to crush your records at the final. And whatever adoring fans you have left will forget your name."  
  
Viktor thinks, watching Yurio sprint away from him with a guilt he rarely feels at the back of his throat, that he's welcome to them.  
  
***

 

“Yuri,” Viktor had said at the hotel, sounding on the verge of tears again, “you're not going to ask me to take the ring off, are you?”

 

“No!” Yuri had bitten the skin off his lip, tasting blood. “I don't -- it's just -- it's yours.”

 

Viktor’s voice had been bitter when he said, eyes on his reflection in the mirror, “It didn't mean very much though, did it?”

 

Clinging to each other by the side of the rink as the stadium started to empty of fans and other skaters, photographers satisfied with what they'd already taken, Yuri can't believe he’d ever been so stupid.

 

“I'm sorry,” he tells Viktor, or Viktor’s shoulder, because that's what he’s pressing his face against, voice slightly muffled. “I just didn't want to hold you back.”

 

“You could never,” Viktor says. He sounds a little sad, and Yuri raises his head to look at him. Viktor’s clutching at the fabric of his costume, holding on tight. “Look at us. We’re much better together, Yuri. You won silver, you broke a world record. The best free skate program in history!”

 

Nothing about that sentence feels real. The medal is solid against his chest, though, and eventually Yuri might start believing he really earned it.

 

“What about you?” he says. “That was your world record I broke.”

 

“I didn't need it,” Viktor says blithely. He's staring at Yuri like he's waiting for something, and Yuri doesn't know what it is.

 

“I thought it would be easier for you to go back to skating if you didn't have to worry about me,” Yuri says. “Can you honestly say none of it bothers you? What people say?”

 

“It doesn't mean anything to me,” Viktor says fiercely. “I'm _happy_ with you.”

 

Somehow, it's a revelation to hear him say that.

 

“I'm happy, too,” Yuri says. That feels like a revelation as well.

 

Yuri thinks he might need to win five gold medals to understand Viktor, to believe him, but with Viktor he thinks he could do it.

 

“We should probably leave the rink now,” Victor says. He looks at Yuri with watery eyes. It's not as strange as the first time to see him cry.

 

They'll keep skating. They'll skate together. The rest Yuri can figure out later.

 

***

 

There's a gala performance that makes Viktor fall in love with skating all over again, and with Yuri. There's a banquet afterwards, and Yuri wears his nice new suit and lets Viktor tie his tie into a rose knot.

 

It feels a little precarious, still, this thing they have, but Viktor is going to make sure he doesn't let it break. It's precious, too.

 

Yuri is a star at the banquet, almost as much as Yurio. They're both world record holders now, and Viktor isn't anymore. It feels like a weight off his shoulders. He hangs to the side while people swarm around Yuri; he's got to learn to turn on the charm without Viktor by his side. He's getting better at it already.

 

“So I hear Katsuki isn't retiring,” Yurio says, appearing at Viktor’s shoulder with a glass of sparkling grape juice in hand and Yakov at his side. “You think your boyfriend’s going to beat me next time?”

 

“Fiancé,” Viktor smiles, and to his surprise Yurio smiles back. Only for a second, and then his customary scowl is back.

 

“Yeah, well, you looked happy,” he mutters, kicking at the floor in his dress shoes. “I guess there are some people in Russia who might want you back.”

 

Viktor beams. _Unconditional love_ , he thinks.

 

“We’ll be happy to have you back,” Yakov says stiffly. “The media won't like it, but I suppose you've never cared much about that.”

 

“And you?” Viktor says.

 

Yakov sighs. “You are a great artist, Vitya. Unfortunately I cannot refuse you. But now I suppose you should go and dance,” he says, and nods at a point over Viktor’s shoulder.

 

When he turns around, Yuri is weaving his way through the crowd, bright-eyed and waving enthusiastically. “Viktor!”

 

He stops short a few paces from him and holds out his hand. “Dance with me?” he says. “I’ve barely had any champagne, so I'll remember this time.”

 

“Barely any” might be an exaggeration, but he's clearly much more sober than last year, just tipsy enough to have slightly more self-confidence.

 

Viktor takes his hand, and feels warmer immediately, more complete and more right. “Let's dance,” he says.

 

Yuri pulls him onto the dance floor.

 

It’s a waltz, nothing they've ever danced together before, but it's easy to follow and let Yuri lead. Everyone else in the room watches, but there's no need to look at anyone but each other. Viktor knows they must be beautiful.

  
Viktor thinks that if they were allowed to skate together in competition, they'd win every gold medal for pairs that the world has to offer. Every pairs routine is judged as a romance, and Viktor had always thought so many of them were stale, hollow. They were artificial and contrived, retellng the same story a thousand times. They were nothing like what he and Yuri had. He would pour his heart onto the ice skating with Yuri, if he could, and they'd be beautiful. And Yuri would never have any reason to doubt again.  
  
Viktor thinks they should rewrite the rule book just for them, just for Yuri, because he deserves it.  
  
"I love you," Viktor says in the cab on the way back to their hotel, holding tightly onto Yuri's silver medal. It's his best victory, because it means Yuri is staying, that Viktor won't have to stop looking at him for as long as he wants.  
  
Yuri's grinning like he did last year, confident and maybe a little cocky, but mostly just happy, Viktor thinks. He thinks maybe no two people have ever been as happy as they are.  
  
"Say it again," Yuri tells him, with no hesitation in his voice. His hands curl around Viktor's so they're both holding onto the medal.  
  
"I love you," Viktor breathes, and he can't stop saying it for the rest of the night.  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading -- im also on tumblr @ spacesocialist


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